Posted on 12/19/2024 2:51:35 AM PST by Reverend Wright
But the obstacles the U.S. has faced in trying to supply Ukraine during the past two years have revealed a systemic, gaping national-security weakness. It is a weakness that afflicts the U.S. military at all levels, and about which the public is largely unaware. The vaunted American war machine is in disarray and disrepair.
.....Ted Anderson, a retired Army officer who is now a principal partner of Forward Global, a defense consultancy, told me, “You would stay awake all night if you had any idea how short we are of artillery ammo.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
And it is now becoming clear as many of us said starting in 2022, that this is an industrial capacity problem. Not a Pentagon contracting or inefficiency problem.
After 2 1/2 years the situation is not really improving. And weapons stockpiles continue to fall.
Keeping this simple enough for the neocons out there, if this were any one of the SIM games, the USA would be the first civilization I'd conquer. After several decades of loser neocon policy maybe we should try something different.
I had read this article a couple of days ago and it is an excellent reminder of how bad things were 3 years ago, and how this Russian war has woken us up and put these issues front and center, and wonderfully during peacetime rather than being exposed while being in a major war against China or Russia when it could mean the loss of the war and our nation.
Not just America, but the rest of NATO and our Pacific allies like Japan, Australia, South Korea, all of our friends and allies have seen the lessons as we all observe this massive European war and so far we have had 3 years to improve our situations and dig ourselves out of the holes we didn’t even know we had, it is better to learn about shortcomings before you are thrown into the desperate need for the fixes, when you can do nothing about them.
Much of this comes back to the peace dividend of the 1990s. With little to no procurement of many weapons systems, the industrial plant was sold off or repurposed, and the knowledge of how to build that stuff was not passed on to the next generation of skilled tradesmen.
After 2 1/2 years the situation is not really improving.
Things are improving, but extremely slowly, even with a will and no bureaucratic roadblocks slowing things down it takes 6-18 months to build new plant. When you have to navigate a bunch of permitting to even start 5-10 years is not uncommon.
And weapons stockpiles continue to fall.
Well duh! While production of systems has increased and will continue to increase, war consumes an order of magnitude more munitions than peacetime. Most munitions have a shelf life and there is no point in building any items with a shelf life any faster than they are consumed.
“No! No! It’s going to stiiiiiiimilate the ecooooonomy!” - neocon warmongers at every opportunity they get to “explain” how emptying our inventory is “good”.
I liked them claiming that the “old worn out stuff is being sent”.
And that’s not the case at all.
Who needs artillery shells? I mean, everyone says drones dropping grenades are the way to go now.
“Much of this comes back to the peace dividend of the 1990s. With little to no procurement of many weapons systems, the industrial plant was sold off or repurposed, and the knowledge of how to build that stuff was not passed on to the next generation of skilled tradesmen.”
No it is worse than that. The factory offshoring for everything, not just military, means that the companies which made factory tooling for civilian and military production have shut down or drastically downsized.
That’s why the production equipment for the new Texas artillery shell factory is from Turkey (Repkon)
Silicon Valley failed on drones as well, unfortunately.
https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3
If we need small arms ammunition we can retrieve some from the IRS...
I believe the kill in war is around 250k to 300k rounds per kill.
Hopefully we start rebuilding 21 January.
[Starting from scratch and given three years to do it, the U.S. today could not replicate the achievement of World War II—could not build trucks and tanks and ships and airplanes in such volume.]
WW2 was a total war. The US, and its adversaries, built unfathomable amounts of war equipment not because they repurposed civilian machine tools, because they built new ones from scratch using budget allocations not seen before. US military spending went from 1% to 40% of the entire economy. For reference, 40% is, today, total federal, state and local government spending *combined*. It is 40 cents out of every dollar of national output. That is how the Navy, from a handful of carriers prewar, peaked at 150. Mountains of cash extracted through the rationing of civilian products and a ban on the production of a laundry list of products considered luxuries in the context of total war, like civilian cars and silk stockings.
Prior to the war, US arms were creaky, obsolete and often unfit for purpose, with submarine torpedoes being a notorious example. By war’s end, Wunderwaffe like long range bombers and atomic bombs were helping to kill Germans and Japanese by the tens of thousands in a single day. That enormous, all-consuming budget made this possible. It was also why Truman was in a hurry to end the war. This level of effort could not be sustained for decades. Something was bound to give, and economic collapse, perhaps along with hyperinflation, was a specter that haunted war planners on all sides. That collapse would likely be accompanied by military defeat. No one knew the point at which the gaskets would start blowing, but the fear of its consequences gnawed at every war leader.
I’m scratching my head here, trying to figure out how this is a problem.
The leaders of this country have spent most of my lifetime using this “vaunted American war machine” to fight stupid endless wars that serve no damn good purpose for anyone other than military contractors and their paid whores in Washington.
Ok lets do artillery shells for total war.
The USA has one company remaining that can build a forging press for the steel shells. (Erie/Ajax/CECO).
They have less than 50 employees
Well if it is 200K rounds each, it is going to be pretty expensive because the new 277 Fury high pressure is $2+ per round (Pentagon price)
[Much of this comes back to the peace dividend of the 1990s.]
WW2 US weapons were often outdated or ineffective at the outset because 1% doesn’t buy much. 3% in recent decades has bought the best weapons in existence, mostly due to grandfathered Cold War tech, when budgets hit 8%. But a world war fought against China might require the same 40% WW2 did.
He’s writing about the industrial production side of the military.
It’s collapsed because the overall industrial base has collapses. This is not a “win” for anyone except those that want to import everything.
Missed a couple. Folks, feel free to add anything I missed.
Thanks.
[Ok lets do artillery shells for total war.
The USA has one company remaining that can build a forging press for the steel shells. (Erie/Ajax/CECO).
They have less than 50 employees]
Ukraine needs those shells because it doesn’t have the planes needed to take out Russia’s SAMs, ammo dumps, supply vehicles, big guns, tanks and massed infantry. We do.
[Ok lets do artillery shells for total war.
The USA has one company remaining that can build a forging press for the steel shells. (Erie/Ajax/CECO).
They have less than 50 employees]
I was a volunteer at my local ANG Base Museum for 13 years. We were sort of off-the-grid until I went nuts on YT and FB with historic video, photos, graphics, PSA’s, etc. The more I learned of the now 107 years of military aviation history there the more I saw a decline in it’s significance as a vital installation. A few years back, the new Management went all-out with an educational mission agenda but they only portray a history where if you were a 12 year-old kid on a field trip, you would not walk away with the impression that the Base and it’s mission is now just a shadow of it’s former self.
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